playing better go while falling asleep

[spook]

I am a bit puzzled about this. Because there is some kind of contradiction.

I play a lot of games with Zenith (about 1 game / day).
And what I've noticed is that against a 4 dan level I have about a 50-50 win rate.
I've been doing that for more than a year now.

Here is the strange thing: when I'm playing Zenith while falling asleep, I always win.
Sometimes I do want to play a game, but I'm actually extremely tired, and should really be going to bed.
Next, I'm in a constant state of falling asleep, waking up, playing a move, falling asleep again, ... etc.
Strangely enough, it seems that my results are better, in that state I could probably even handle a stronger level.

By contrast, when I play go after work I really play badly.
So, there is some kind of contradiction: i.e. playing when tired = bad ; playing when extremely tired = good.

So, here is a theory that I just came up with:
It's perhaps not the falling asleep, but it's the constant waking-up that boosts the distribution of some kind of hormone that increases my concentration for a short period, just enough to read out the necessary moves and make a strategic decision.

Just wondering if anybody else had similar experiences ?

[jeromie]

Not I. My surest path to a losing streak is when I think, "I'm really tired but don't feel like going to bed. I'll just play a quick game of go."

[Bill Spight]

I have certainly awoken with the correct answer to a go problem in my mind.

Maybe your intuition is better than your reading.

[MikeKyle]

I can definitely relate to this in a round about way.

My experience in entering UK tournaments is mixed, however I've entered around half of the tournaments after very little sleep the previous night (sometimes because of travel, sometimes just very irresponsible socializing into the early morning) and bizarrely these seem to be the ones that i've done very well at. I'm a kyu player so my results will naturally vary a lot, but It's quite stark - tournaments that I've entered at a new, stronger grade and practically falling asleep at the board expected to loose 3/3, I've ended up winning 3/3.

I have a loose hypothesis that when I'm awake and alert I do too much distracting thinking, but when I'm tired I have to dedicate my focus entirely on the important matters in hand.
eg. when awake I think i will be more prone to thinking that I have a local position read out and be likely to read out other parts of the board or start counting or considering good endgame, but when tired I'd probably dedicate my focus to the local problem and possibly read it deeper which is often a better idea.

[Kirby]

Maybe you're too tired to remember the actual result of the game :-p

[aTan]

Last tournament I arrived to another city and didn't sleep shole night during the travel. I was sure i will fail tournament.
But it appears I played one of my best games that time. All opponents were 1-3 stones stronger.
But also I did few blinds which were oblivious and usually I don't do them.
So I think it was really strange.